Next day we arranged to leave Harry at Manor Wood and go into Chester in the little car. Carol dropped me off at the venue for the Esperanto Federation Meeting and then discovered the delights of trying to find somewhere to park in Chester! She didn’t really ‘do’ the city, but did see the Cathedral from the outside:

May 2026 – Photos missing – can’t be found to reinstate them.                                

 

Meanwhile an international gathering of Esperanto speakers (from Italy, Poland, Estonia, Germany, Scotland, Wales and even Yorkshire) met informally for lunch, then more formally for a bit of business before hearing from the Speaker, Francesco Maurelli, from Italy, about his travels, mainly in Brazil and Australia. The event concluded with separate groups for intermediate and advanced speakers. Helping (I hope) the intermediate group, I drew their attention to the danger of word-for-word translation and ‘dictionaryitis’. It was interesting that the non-English speakers present confirmed that the examples I gave were more or less incomprehensible to anyone who couldn’t work out what the original mistranslated English had been.

Carol arrived to dig me out prompt at 5 o’clock and we made our way back to Manor Wood to reunite the two vehicles. We then travelled on through increasingly bad weather to arrive at Somers Wood (Meriden) in very heavy rain. Nothing for it but to put on waterproofs and do what had to be done – take in water and unhook the vehicles before parking up. The rain eased off during the night, but was chucking it down again in the morning. Visiting the National Exhibition Centre in really bad weather is an experience to be avoided if at all possible. We were guided to park about mid-way between the shuttle-bus stop and the exhibition hall, so walk or ride, we were going to get soaked. There are no covered walkways.

However, arriving at the ‘A Place in the Sun’ Exhibition soaking wet, it was surprising how quickly we dried out! In spite finding that on the one occasion when you wanted hot air driers in the toilets, there weren’t any! Roller towels only! Presumably it was the air conditioning that did the job. As for the exhibition, we were a bit ‘miffed’ that contrary to advance publicity and information in the show guide, there were actually no auditions for ‘A Place in the Sun’ or ‘A Place in the Sun – Home or Away?’. They were auditioning for a programme for people looking to set up a business overseas, but that wasn’t us. Still, we filled in an application for future consideration, and made a number of possibly useful contacts – estate agents are already sending e-mails of ‘interesting’ properties, and we have contact numbers for people to get in touch with once we are there. (Where?!)

That was Sunday 3rd October. Monday was fine and we made our way to Warwick Castle, which Carol had never seen before. It is a splendid example of a Stately Home within the walls of a fortified castle, but it’s an expensive visit. The current owners (wasn’t it with Madame Tussaud’s for a while?) have done a lot with animations using live actors. The photos do not include the ‘Dungeon Experience’!

Maybe I’ll make an album of the other pictures – we took quite a lot.

The journey home on Tuesday was happily uneventful – apart from the complete rainbow which accompanied us for some distance. We found no crock of gold, but maybe sunny days are ahead – our Channel Crossing is actually booked! Watch this space!